


Cupid Disarmed

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Getting Together, Healer Sirius Black, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, POV First Person, POV Remus Lupin, Veela Remus Lupin, it is Real Darcy Hours for Sirius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 13:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21100505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Remus Lupin has Veela blood, Sirius Black reads trite romance novels, and neither of them are quite sure what the fuck to do with their hands when they get to talking with one another.





	Cupid Disarmed

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a [tumblr ask prompt](https://chromat1cs.tumblr.com/post/188384852624/want-more-prompts-veela-remus-lease) spurred by the beautiful mindzone of one RJ (aka [pixelated](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixelated/pseuds/pixelated)), and I was rabid to keep exploring the dynamic between these two so this is the product of that :>
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Veela!Remus has long been something I've wanted to play with, and this fic was a whole barrel of fun for me.

I was a beautiful child.

Truly, I look at photographs and if I think hard enough I can sometimes remember what it was like to not want to hide. 

But of course, I was bitten at six years old. Everything since then just feels like ash between my teeth. 

That’s the thing about heritage that nobody tells you—everyone is always trying to find new ways to stare at you for it. I’ve the unfortunate luck of inheriting nearly seventy percent of my father’s side of the genetics, which means my mouth and my smile and the general pitch of my limbs is all my mother but my hair and my eyes and the Veela blood comes from dear old da. 

I realize some people would quite literally murder the elderly for even a drop of my lineage, but all it’s been for me over the past twenty-odd years has been a fucking nuisance. 

There isn’t as much tortured romance as one might think in living as an unregistered werewolf in London—you keep shut that Warren Zevon reference, I see it in your eyes. It’s a bit boring really, but on a visceral level I don’t want to be noticed, and therein lies the great cosmic joke. All people want to do is ogle me and angle for conversation. All I want to do is be left alone. 

So I dress like a grandfather. I hide my face behind extremely left-of-vogue glasses as best I can. I’ve taken the stuffiest, quietest job north of Denmark, and I go unnoticed here in the shelves of Madame Pommeli’s book store perhaps sixty percent of the time. The other forty percent happens to be the unfortunate necessity of manning the register, at which point I’ve gotten quite good at weathering the poorly-covered gawping from my customers as I magic their purchases into neat little stacks and show them off with the only smile I’ve found I can give that doesn’t dazzle someone where they stand. 

It’s difficult sometimes to find bright spots amid my craving for anonymity, but I’ve found over the past several months that one of them is tall and kind and wears his long, dark hair twisted up in all sorts of interesting and distracted knots depending on how hectic his week has been. 

He’s a Healer, and he comes in every Wednesday at noon sharp. I’ve pledged myself, entirely out of character, to the register around this hour, because I believe time has made me soft and it would be embarrassing if he weren’t such a joy to watch peruse. He has long, graceful fingers that pick along the spines as though the struts of the shelves are the strings of some great instrument, strumming at it as he picks out one new book a week—usually, to my amusement, a paperback by a witch with a name like Imelda Silverheart and a cover on which a pair of lovers entwine with all the heaving bosoms and glimmering chest muscles capital to the genre. 

His name, I’ve divined from the embroidered patch on the breast of his robes, is Sirius Black. I will admit to repeating those four syllables silently to myself every now and again when I can’t sleep, staring up at my ceiling as Soho blossoms in the dark outside my broom closet of a flat. 

“Who’s doing the ravishing this week?” I inwardly cringe at the way my voice cracks a little, supremely unused to speaking to customers. A young woman looks up surreptitiously from the magical cooking section, drawn by what some have told me is the sound of bells and autumn sighs knit into my voice, and I try to ignore it in order to keep my nerve. I watch intently the way Sirius’ eyes crinkle pleasantly at their corners, the exhaustion of existing looking on him like a tailored suit. 

“Lord Yaxley,” he replies loftily, one hand in his pocket and his hip jutted forward slightly with a relaxed yet crow-proud stance that makes me need to steer my thoughts away from his hips as he turns the book over to skim its back cover as though he hadn’t just done that there in the Romance aisle.

Holding in a chuckle—because that would truly be the disaster, as laughing here in the bookshop might draw another patron up to the counter just to ask a question that doesn’t need asking and right now there’s nothing in the world that matters more than nattering with Sirius Black about his novellas—I spell the register into its sum with a jot of my fingers. “Didn’t he bewitch Ms. Arabella into a sordid affair in Munich last week?”

The man reads penny romances in between his rounds to keep him awake and laughing so as better to serve his patients, I mean truly; what am I supposed to do,  _ not _ fall for him like an unbalanced vase?

Sirius bites down on his lip without warning and I swear I can feel my heart stop for a moment. “It’s, ah, actually his…rent boy, this time,” he murmurs. A faint flush comes up to flirt with his cheeks and I want to die right there. I swallow and, for some reason, nod as I hold out my hand for his four knuts. They rattle together in my palm and I almost drop them, fingers shaking just a bit. 

“He’s got fine taste then after all,” I find myself saying plainly. Stupidly, caught up in all the snares of my own flusterment, I remove my glasses to rub at my eyes while the register chimes pleasantly. Sirius is the one who laughs to himself, a sound I will always insist is more beautiful than anything my ancestors could ever produce, and I can’t help but blink at him across the counter with my own little instinctual smile. 

It’s a mistake—I know it by the way his jaw drops a little, his pupils dilate, his throat works around silence for just a moment; I see these symptoms of idealization every time I step outside in anything a step above these oversized jumpers and poorly-fitting trousers. But, I find myself thinking, if this is a mistake, then I want to keep stumbling over my feet until I turn to dust. 

“Yeah, he—” Sirius moves to turn the book over in his hands and drops it noisily on the counter when he fumbles it. “He does, I think, yes.” He scrambles to collect it again, and when he has it back in his hands it’s upside down. “He certainly does.”

“Enjoy it, then. I’ll see you next week?”

It’s the only thing I can think to do to save my pounding heart and the thinning shred of my nerve. I’m liable to vault over the register and kiss the breath of life itself right out of Sirius if he doesn’t turn away in a minute or so—I’ve never reacted to anyone looking at me this way before, but then again I don’t think I’ve ever  _ wanted _ anyone to look at me this way before. 

I want Sirius Black to look at me, I find with a bolt of discovery deep in the meat of my heart, until he can see into the very marrow of my bones. 

“I—yes, next week. Next week perhaps another Yaxley if he keeps this up, eh?” Sirius waggles the book jauntily, but I can still see the vague glimmer of awe in his expression. “Have a good day, then, won’t you?”

He asks, or tells me, as though he’s prescribing me something. I won’t waste words describing the way I’m sure we all know that goes straight to a hallowed place just south of my belt buckle. 

It isn’t until several minutes after Sirius leaves, the bell atop the door jangling this month’s tune of  _ I Should Be So Lucky _ , that I realize—squinting at the fuzzy blur of titles stacked on the back desk—I’ve completely forgotten to put my glasses back on.

—

It is in fact, I discover with a thrill in the pit of my guts completely unbecoming of my normal disposition, another Yaxley next week.

I’ve spent the greater part of the past six days trying not to think about Sirius so intently, train my brain back down to the casual flitting thoughts about him instead of this new fixation—a hunger really, all caused by the idea of him reading a queer romance. A story about a rent boy and a horny baron is hardly cause for me to think I’d last two seconds as a likely companion, but I’ve discovered lately there are very few things I can do to quit the feeling.

So, like any good protagonist in someone else’s dime-a-day fantasy, I’ve been doing the smart thing and simply pining about it. I find it unfortunate and more than a little fucking annoying that pining doesn’t quite work when the subject of the act is standing not two feet away from you.

“Have you had a good week so far?”

I look up from spelling Sirius’ purchase into the register and must raise my eyebrows a little, startled out of my internal repetition of  _ Don’t let your heart bubble up from your throat, don’t fucking do it, _ because I see his mouth twitch a little as though he’s holding in a smile. There’s a little flash of something skittering around in that staggering grey of his eyes, something hopeful and excited and terribly familiar—like a scent, he’s caught the craving to look at me. I should be put off by that, exhausting as it is to get from everyone else, but the only reaction I can scoop up from the broth of my boiling insides is a reckless sort of blind obeisance. 

As though I’m someone who loves themself, I obey the compulsion and pretend at a distracted little sigh as I remove my glasses. I pretend not to see the excitement that brims over in Sirius’ stare, pushing my sleeves up a little as I shrug. “Good enough, I suppose. The weather is cooling a little, that’s always nice.”

“It is nice, yeah.” Sirius’ voice trails off a little and his hand misses the pocket on his robes once before finding it, and it would be terribly pathetic if wonderment didn’t look so good on him—or, if I weren’t playing into this with a full hand. A longer-than-usual silence descends, Sirius still looking at me as though I’ve emerged from some kind of dream dripping in gold, and I let it stretch for a few moments before nodding a little at the books stacked in front of him.

“That’s an extra book for you there, isn’t it? Ramping up your reading pace?”

Sirius blinks, coming out of a fog, that little twitch of the brow and quirk of the mouth that says  _ Oh, shit, I’ve been staring _ that I normally hate to see but again looks so bloody lovely on Sirius’ face that it doesn’t bother me now in the slightest. “Oh!” His mouth makes a perfect little o-shape and I fastidiously do  _ not _ have any sidelining thoughts about his lips. “Yes, well, sort of. I’m away next week, out for some house calls in the country. I need some light fare to keep me busy between my patients, and unfortunately a corporeal patronus can’t quite pop down and get another book for me.”

I decide not to mildly remind him that Apparating is a real thing wizards do and settle for giving him a very small smile instead. He manages not to react too obviously to it. I seize my courage by the neck and tip my head to one side, sliding my eyes down at an unnecessarily languid angle, and watch Sirius all but melt through the corner of my gaze. “Yaxley again,” I tease very, very lightly.

“Yaxley again,” Sirius wheezes in blind and addled confirmation.

Our fingers brush ever so slightly when he hands me his money, and I gift him another little grin for the road. Color rises under his faultless olive skin, and perhaps for the first time in my life I feel as though being seen—not just noticed or happened-upon, but well and truly  _ seen _ —is far from the worst thing that could befall me.

Sirius fills the last few moments of our exchange with some more idle chatter about the weather. When he leaves, robes eddying behind him with an attractive swish down near his calves, it feels like reassuming a very heavy set of armor when I set my glasses back onto my face and roll my sleeves back down to kiss my wrists.

—

I feel I must stress the fact that I’ve fucked before.

I lost my virginity when I was 19 to a beautiful young woman named Emmeline Vance a few weeks after we met at a support group for twenty-somethings living with Veela blood. I wasn’t quite a twenty-something but had all the trappings of one, new to London and desperate for anything to do that wasn’t rooting around in the fens for new places to transform away from civilization each month. She’d been born and raised in the city and fairly fit to jump on anyone with even a whiff of far-away to them—I spent the first fourteen years of my life in Cork, and the accent has never really found its way out of my mouth.

The sexual tension was thick as a retaining wall between us from the outset, and all it took to break it was a couple of drinks together after a support session in which everyone had been talking about how they deal with trying to keep sexual encounters casual—I suppose my virginal blushing and general mumbling about having no problem at all keeping the people I’d  _ kissed _ at arms’ length gave me away like a glaring target. Emmeline had slid a hand up the inside of my thigh, smiled that near-one-hundred-percent Veela smile of hers at me in the secrecy of our booth at the pub, and invited me back to her flat. 

I don’t think I’ve ever chugged a pint faster than in that moment. What followed was a blur of sweat, spit, spoor, and sweetness the likes of which I’d never known before.

As it tends to follow with my luck in matters of the heart—or I should consider it  _ good _ luck, as I’ve still to this day never had to roll over in bed and tell someone  _ By the by, I’ll be changing into a werewolf tomorrow, just so you’re aware _ —Emmeline took a job in Iceland only a month or so after we began that whole saga, somewhere outside of Reykjav í k or another one of those cities with far too many k’s and j’s coming after one another.

Since then, I’ve my freedom befitting a modern man to sate my spurrings with a number of other people—women, men, those who aren’t either, burly, slight, magical, Muggle, quite an impressive gamut if I do say so myself looking back on it. In such retrospect, it seems I have at least some of a type that I tend to pull; rather tall, dark hair, beautiful smiles, and large hands. 

I do  _ quite _ like being handled by a capable pair of hands.

If I seem in this instant a bit stuck on the idea of fucking, or my own past encounters in general, chalk it up to the fact that the idea of having to go an extra week without being able to watch Sirius Black pick out books bothers me in more ways than one.

Firstly, in that I’ve never felt the compulsion to be the one who  _ starts _ affection.

Secondly, in that I’m quickly discovering I’m absolutely pants at denying myself the craving for more of that affection.

Thirdly, in that the apparent limit for my own sanity is a whopping eight days of Sirius-less afternoons and I’ve spent the last four nights harder than a fucking oak tree, tossing myself off with a desperation I don’t think I’ve felt for it since puberty.

So. I would apologize for my fixation, but there’s only so much I care to worry about when it’s a new moon and I still feel as though my skin is liable to peel back with the fervor of my own heartbeat.

And besides, there isn’t much to really talk about anyways. Sirius Black is in the countryside. The days here in London in the interim are mundanity itself, distilled and disgruntlingly pure.

—

The moon is on her filling wax, pearly and pregnant up there beyond the sky with around five nights left before I hoof myself out to Hertfordshire and adopt a set of four gangly furred legs for several hours, when Sirius returns to the book shop.

To say I feel excitement fizzle through me like tallow is an understatement. Were I really a candle, the whole mess of me would have burst into a wet and dripping mess there on the back office floor.

“You’re back!”

I say it was far too much fervor. A couple hovering around in the Nonfiction section look up at me—bursting out to the front counter as though I’ve been wasting away in a lighthouse on the coast for months on end,  _ honestly _ —and the sparkle in their eyes I notice with a self-conscious glance over at them spells plain the absolute adoration I’ve accidentally drummed up in my voice, a censer burning a brick of my own helpless desire itself.

If Sirius is equally staggered, he covers it smoothly with a little one-armed lean onto the counter. “I’m back,” he says simply. His smile looks tired but eminently happy to be here. “And I’m in dire need of  _ several _ books.”

He says it as though it’s something sexy, and my ever-mutinous ears construe it as something  _ very _ sexy,  _ why the fuck is that sexy?  _ No matter. I nod, gesturing with a weird little twitch of my wrist at the Romance shelves—or at least, what  _ feels _ like a weird twitch but is in actuality more of a languid gesture of invitation according to the way Sirius’ eyes track my hand like a plated meal. 

_ Christ. _ String me up my toes and make me recite psalms at this rate, I’m a lost fucking cause.

“Just yesterday, ah, we got in some more Pepperhoff novels, as well as more of that new Dinah Allbright series the magazines have raving about all month.” My mouth canters on without permission, bidding Sirius go look and take a few steps back from the counter lest I reach across and bury my fingers in his hair as I’ve been dreaming vaguely to do over the past week—trace his lips with my thumbs, whisper pretty nothings against his temples, rut desperately into the solidity of the desk in front of me—

He sniffs a low little chuckle, snapping me out of my inconvenient daydreams, and I hope to Merlin they’re not spelled across my forehead like some kind of sordid advertisement. “I think I’ll look at the Allbright, yes, thanks,” he hums. There’s a little flash behind his eyes that passes too quickly for me to make any sense of it. He’s so close I can smell him, especially this near to the moon; something woodsy, a confident musk strapped to him like a belt of knives, and  _ fucking hell,  _ I want nothing more than to be cut open.

“Grand,” I croak. My smile feels like a clutter of wooden blocks around my teeth, but Sirius flushes that private and subtle pink of his again and I know he sees it as something gorgeous. The potential of that does disastrous things to my guts.

Sirius bites down on his bottom lip, nodding a little absently to himself, and raps his knuckles once on wood between us. “Grand,” he parrots. It sounds leagues and lifetimes better to me on his tongue. He turns to the shelves, his robes wafting a little more of that scent at me as he goes, and I grip so hard on the edge of the counter I think my fingers might snap apart at their joints.

He ends up buying three of the Allbrights and a Pepperhoff for good measure. I comment once on the fact that he must be reading with quite an increased voracity these days, buying all these books at once, and Sirius flounders a little there with his money in hand. 

“It's one of my more manageable habits. Cheers,” he says,  _ breathes _ really, when he passes the sickle to me between finger and thumb. I want to ignore the payment and instead take him by the wrist, slide my fingertips against his palm and sweep my thumb over the back of that flawless rutile-brown hand of his and ask what other habits of his might include me, kiss him between each knuckle and inhale the grace rolling off his skin like a fine and constant mist—but somehow I manage to restrain myself. I take the coin and only let my touch brush along his thumbnail, and even that makes the subtle tang of his heartbeat sharpen in the air to the instinctive bed of my senses.

“Cheers.” I leave him with a bright stare, a look that couldn’t even be misconstrued if I hadn’t the blood of undeniable creatures warring around in my veins.

Sirius leaves me with a sharp inhale, a nod, and a haphazard sweep of an exit with his books huddled in one arm that somehow manages to be more endearing than if he had suddenly decided to drop to one knee and declaim sonnets in my name.

I’m a wreck, truly.

Let’s blame the moon, shall we?

—

On to matters of the moon, then:

Normally I’m the absolute picture of all things put-together when it comes to weathering a full, or as put-together as a scampering and slightly-mangy werewolf can get at the height of a monthly curse. Alas, the Veela-isms don’t quite translate outside of a human body.

But, according to the way I wake up with a bloodied nose and a dislocated shoulder just a few minutes after dawn with the forest damp and chittering around my nakedness—leaves wet as a sodden carpet under my skin, pain radiating down from my rotator cuff like a hoard of wasps has taken residence there—this month I’ve slipped a bit.

I refuse to acknowledge the reason for all this mania and distraction, shunting itself into the mad cantering of my thoothier passenger, comes from a single source of very physical frustration caused by one Sirius Black.

But I will acknowledge, hefting myself up into a sit and trying not to wince too violently at the way my shoulder screams in resistance to movement, that I can’t just fix this up with my normal battery of rudimentary healing magic. I need to get myself to a hospital, which I do—Apparate back to the clinic around the corner from the bookshop after stumbling back into my clothes, because of course I still need to get to work later this afternoon; keeping up appearances and all, you know, I’ve gotten very good at it over the years.

I should know by now the universe is a fickle bastard of a thing.

Of course—because it has to be, doesn’t it? I should have deduced it through all the aimless yearning I’ve been doing lately—this is the clinic at which Healer Black is fastidiously employed.

“Remus L—Remus Lupin?”

That broad oak of a voice announces my name from the other end of the waiting room as though taken aback by the shape of my name on his tongue, perhaps looking up and recognizing me halfway through it with the way the sound warbles a little. I start with it, just as surprised, forgetting to sink very far into myself from where I’m sat in order to skate under everyone else’s perception as I hold a bundle of ice wrapped in an old kerchief under my nose with my injured arm cradled carefully against my chest. The old wizard next to me watches me intently, slightly awestruck, as I awkwardly raise my good arm elbow-first. “Present,” I say with a wince, whether for physical pain or the sting of social failure I don’t know for sure.

Sirius still looks a bit surprised as he nods back into the hallway behind him, the parchment with my admission slip still in one hand. He tips a small smile onto his lips, a play at composure; “Ready to see you now.”

_ Ready to see you always, _ my insufferable unconscious shrieks into the hollows of my skull. I ignore it, standing carefully, and follow the dashing cut of Sirius’ robes back into a comfortable examination room. 

“Did you get into an accident? Are you alright?”

The door shuts behind him, muffle-soft quiet descending with the tone of worry in his voice sounding very un-Healer-like with all its notes of heightened fear drumming along beneath its surface. It’s strangely besotting, just like every other piece of him that latches to my memory and refuses to fucking let go.

“Took a tumble down the stairs of my flat,” I say with a shake of my head, one of my go-to excuses for any visible bumps and scrapes that come from the moons—the greater sprawl of London must think me a terrible klutz. “Normally I could handle the simpler healing just fine, but my blasted shoulder...”

I gesture with it, unthinking, and can’t keep in a hiss when it stabs hurt down across my chest. Sirius looks pained, and he quickly sets down the parchment and draws his wand from his sleeve.

“Breathe easy,” he murmurs with a protective and careful tone that makes it supremely difficult to do just that, “this won’t hurt a bit.”

He sets his wandtip very carefully to the bruised join of my shoulder and whispers a thin thread of blue healing magic down through my jumper and into my skin and sinew. It does hurt, a bit, but I try not to let it show on my face as the warm and prickling pickings of accelerated fixture works its way around my shoulder. I fixate, through the corner of my eye, on the undivided attention laid plain there on Sirius’ face instead of that steady burn—hair piled up and off his face in a haphazardly lovely pile, well-groomed dark brows furrowed above those sharp eyes, peregrine eyes, watching his handiwork with a slightly purse to his lips. He’s very close me,  _ terribly _ close to me, and for a horrifying moment I think I might accidentally lean forward to try catching his mouth with my own.

“Must have been one hell of a fall.”

Sirius murmurs it carefully to himself in a way that makes it clear he probably talks softly to himself like this in the midst of all sorts of tasks. I just barely stay myself from jumping at the unexpected sound, and a nervous little titter finds it way out of me instead. “You’re telling me. Bottom landing met my shoulder like a bag of bricks hurtling down the M25.”

It’s clear the Muggle reference is more than a little lost on him, but he gives me a little smile nonetheless. It’s a distracted sort of smile; he summons another short measure of parchment of records over from the desk behind the examining table and skims it quickly with efficient flicks of his eyes. “Can you confirm your date of birth for me, Remus?”

Something clenches a little in my guts, something that feels as though a very portentous threshold is about to be crossed. I swallow and try to focus on the fact that he isn’t yet calling me  _ Mr. Lupin _ so I suppose not all is lost. “Ah, 10th of March, 1960.”

He frowns a little at the parchment and nods to himself. “And your place of birth?”

“Cork, in Munster.”

The tip of Sirius’ tongue peeks out from between his lips as he runs it over one eyetooth in thought. I try not to imagine what it might feel like pushing its way between my own lips and clear my throat quietly, shifting just so in my seat. Sirius glances up at me, stare lingering for longer than it seems he means it to, and I realize I’ve left my glasses behind in the woods.  _ Damn. _ The only spare pair I’ve left doesn’t quite stay up on my nose.

“Do you have any other magical lineage beside human?”

This question used to bother me, scare me staggered in truth. I’ve largely made a habit of avoiding Healers because of it, always hated the way explaining a Veela father suddenly makes whomever is learning the information begin looking at me less as someone to talk to and far more as someone to observe. But there’s something about the way Sirius says it, all gently and calm as though he isn’t expecting anything but the facts, that makes me less than afraid to nod once.

“Veela,” I say simply, “from my da’s side.”

As a first, what feels like an aside, Sirius raises his eyebrows genially. “That’s fascinating, Veela blood usually passes down maternally.”

A sense of relief invades me, even though deep down I know, somehow, that it isn’t nearly the end of Sirius’ line of questioning. “I seem to have some quite boggling fortune,” I say through a pale little laugh before the smile catches a cut on my lip and makes me wince. Sirius startles a bit, foundering about with the parchment still in the same hand as his wand, and fumbles with the simple black wood to coax another jot of that blue-white magic out to kiss gently along the cut and seal it. I can’t pretend I didn’t find myself staring openly at Sirius’ own mouth through it.

“It—sorry. I was so focused on your shoulder,” Sirius stammers, hiding his gaze a little on the parchment. My heart flexes, knowing with a twinge what comes next; “Any other ancestry? Any at all, could be even just a fraction of something. This is all to improve your care, you see, I—”

“Are you truly going to make me say it, Sirius?”

He seems surprised to hear his first name in an examination room; not off-put, but simply surprised in the same manner as when he first saw me remove my glasses at the bookshop.  _ Well here I am, bared and plain, _ I think to myself,  _ still care to hound after what you can see now? _ My own tongue feels a little overstuffed where it sits in my mouth after talking over him, but I manage to hold his stare with surprising strength.

There’s a long bout of silence, the buzz of the lights above us scoring the quiet like keening morning beginning to pale up over the city outside by now, before Sirius lets out a thin breath and sets the parchment down. “You aren’t registered, I can tell that much.”

He says it as though my avoidance of submitting myself to the Ministry is some kind of personal slight, which I suppose it is as it’s kept a large chunk of history out of the Healers’ records. I narrow my eyes, the strength of the glare compounding a bit as it always does with what my mother tells me is a spitting image of my gran’s full-Veela fury, and tighten my jaw. “Registration is voluntary.”

“Yes,” Sirius coughs out, clearly feeling pinned under my eyes but soldiering onward, “but it’s far safer for you to alert the ministry. For how long have you been dealing with this? They can help, the M—”

“Twenty-two years,” I cut in curtly. Sirius’ eyes widen for just a fraction of a second before he seizes his composure back.

“You’ve— _ twenty-two years? _ Remus, that’s unheard of!”

There again, my name on his tongue runs circles around my heart but I refuse to melt right now in a Healer’s ward. I draw back into myself a bit and re-affix my stare somewhere bland above the doorjamb. A tiny hollow of hurt is beginning to burrow itself into my throat, but I pretend not to feel it and drum up all my secreted vestiges of fuck-the-Ministry propriety. “Yes, you’ve made your thoughts on that known. But I refuse to carve myself open to the system and let them—”

“No, no, not the registry, bollocks to that, I was going to give you the whole what-for we give fresh bites;  _ twenty-two years? _ You were bitten as a boy and you’ve—I mean, look at you! You’re thriving!”

I’m largely speechless at the excitement that’s almost immediately replaced Sirius’ skepticism. I have to take a moment to re-gather my insides and realign the track of my thoughts stuck on  _ look at you, look at you, look at you. _

All I can really manage after a silence that begins feeling uncomfortably long is a pale little huff of a chuckle. “Thriving?”

“Of course!” The only word that can really describe Sirius in this moment is effusive, and I suddenly have the sharp craving to know what he might have been like throughout his Healer training courses—studying, asking questions, performing lab tasks, learning how to smile just so, just like  _ that, _ at patients to make them feel at ease. He sits down on the small rolling chair across from the examination table with an air of eagerness that usually means one is springing  _ up _ from the chair instead. “Look at you,” he repeats, and my heart is  _ soaring; _ “You’re healthy, you’re employed, you’re—well, pardon my directness but you’re extremely attractive and largely untouched by any of the side-effects we normally see from lycanthropy, it—what do you do for it? If you don’t mind me asking?”

Dragging myself up out of that bright stare of his makes me very suddenly aware of what it must have felt for Sirius to see my face without my glasses on for the first time. I blink, forgetting for a moment what words are, before my tongue stumbles twice around a start—”I—well, it—I run.”

Sirius squints at me a little, folding one ankle up on his knee and leaning over it as though leaning closer will make me more intelligible.  _ God, _ he still smells so fucking fantastic. “You...run?”

All I can think to do is shrug, and I’m relieved we got the healing out of the way first so this time it doesn’t feel like an icepick gauging into the meat of my back when I do it. “I pick a forest somewhere in the country every moon, head there before moonrise, strip down, transform, and...yeah. Run.”

_ “Fascinating.” _ Sirius nods slowly and I just know he’s taking mental notes. It should put me off; it turns me on. I cross my legs.

“You think so?”

“Oh, absolutely. All they teach us is that werewolves are this tortured, bitter subsect of people who would rather die than see another moon. I mean— _ twenty-two years.” _ Sirius rests his chin on a fist propped up on the knee stuck out from where he’s rested his foot across his thigh and shakes his head excitedly to himself. “I’m so sorry if this is intrusive, I’ve never even  _ heard _ of someone with your sort of history and been much better off than the lower wards of Mungo’s.”

Thinking of those moonless asylums, the only place in the country in which they’ve managed to tap into the old magic humming through the crust of the earth and hold off the effect of the moon, should rattle me. I know other werewolves, people with whom my parents met when I was still just a boy and trying to figure out how to weather the moons in the first several months, who have been numbed and washed too-clean by the effects of that place—a portion of their essence itself seemingly sapped away with the strange, sucking effect of the wards in those places weaved from sources older than language itself. It had scared my parents even from there, and I’m only lucky they loved me enough to keep suffering through the trial and error of raising me anew until we found a good long run to be more than enough.

The thoughts, thick as they are, blink through me in an instant before I offer a thin little smile at Sirius. “I’m lucky,” I say simply, and I realize that perhaps my deeper thought is entirely through with this conversation. “My parents were very active in my wellness.”

This return to plain decorum seems to jolt something in Sirius, something very sudden that makes me wish with a sharp pang in my belly that I had just let him keep babbling about lycanthropy at large so I could only watch him in the glorious shine of animation. He gives me a smile, apologetic at its corners, and stands. I ache to drag him back down toward me. I do nothing of the sort.

“Well.” Sirius clears his throat and folds the parchment in the outer pocket of his robes. “I hope you know this information is entirely safe with me. Healers’ Code asserts that I am your confidante in all things medical, and what with your shoulder I consider this very medical indeed.”

Relief I hadn’t thought to worry for flutters between my lungs. “I would appreciate that, thank you.”

Both of us waffle there in the liminality of an appointment well and finished for several moments, neither quite knowing what to say. Eventually I seize the chance at bravery in the unique way that being near Sirius always tends to make me do and smile up at him with an earnest and, I find with a heaviness beginning to leech into my bones, tired grin. “Shall I expect you ‘round the shop again tomorrow, or is your last batch still doing you fine?”

I yearn with a very deep want to burn the sight of Sirius looking at me for several seconds as though he can’t believe I’m real into the backs of my eyelids for moments in which I crave to see something beautiful. “Yes, I think so,” he all but wheezes.

We say our farewells with more of our usual cluttered dynamic, neither of us quite wanting to push past the borders of one another’s longing but both of us clearly craving that the other do the same.

Cowards, both of us, we part without even shaking hands.

I return to the bookstore in a fog, glad that Madame Pommeli’s only real presence in the store is her name on the sign and a mothish-smelling swirl of silks on the first of each month to collect the till; I lock the shop behind me as the grandfather clock at the back of the Science Fiction section strikes six, hole up in the back office, and sleep for two more hours.

I dream of wolves, leaves, bare skin, and the ecstatic rush of Sirius bowed over my body as though worshipping an altar dressed solely for him.

—

The next day is rain, in droves and a roaring hell of it as though the weather has only just realized it’s allowed to come down like this.

Very few customers find the gumption to make it out to a little bookshop in this mess—especially in the middle of a dryer season with regards to new publications being released—so I’m left alone to reorganize and shelve some of the stock from the back shelves. It’s always interesting to see what’s selling so well it needs restocking, and I keep a tally of some of the more eclectic pieces being enjoyed by more than a few readers; one about a man falling in love with a robot in some distant and plagued future, another about a Spanish dancer spiraling into red-hot melodrama alongside another one of his stage partners.

All of them make me think, somehow, of Sirius. It would be maddening were it not so welcome.

I thought of him incessantly yesterday, trying to reimagine the feeling of his hand steadying my arm as his magic touched me at my very marrow. I hoped against all hope that he might still want to see me after figuring out the more inconvenient details of my situation, but I also tried to be realistic: what sort of Healer would willingly sew his heart to werewolf, of all creatures?

Regardless, I still tossed myself off with stunning voracity last night with all sorts of filthy imaginings of him bending me over the examination table. I have a feeling that will turn into somewhat of a recurring fantasy.

The day drags on slow as the mud likely building up in every other gutter outside, the front window flashing periodically with lightning and the low rattle of thunder humming at the panes just ahead of it. It’s nearly six o’clock in the evening by the time I’ve nearly given up hope of seeing Sirius today and have begun reciting drying charms to myself in the back of my mind instead of running the sound of Sirius’ voice through it instead, in the case of water leaking through the door into the carpet or, Morgana forbid, the roof eaves. I’m just about to fetch the Muggle mop I prefer to keep in the back when the door chimes its new chorus lick from  _ Heaven Is a Place On Earth _ and ushers none other than Sirius Black into the shop. 

We stare at one another for several moments as pleasant surprise shoots through me like a dueling spell.  _ He’s here,  _ the static in my veins clamors to scream with every heartbeat,  _ he’s here, he’s here, he’s still here. _

“Hallo,” I manage to breathe. Sirius is dripping wet, a drying charm forgotten in, what is that, haste? Color is high in his cheeks, the blush of exertion and maybe some cold as his overcoat is unbuttoned and his hair is unbound. 

“Remus,” he pants.

Just that, just my name on a scrape of breath that sounds like a plea.

I swallow. “Have—how has your day been? You’re a little later than normal.”

Sirius nods to himself, distractedly, and moves forward to rest both hands on the lip of the front counter. “I’m sorry if I’ve worried you, arriving later.”

God, but we’re less than a foot apart. Again, just as every time he’s bought his books, were I a braver man I could reach up and touch his cheek. I look down quickly to avoid the intensity of his stare, sterling hot, and these blasted spare glasses of mine slip down my nose. I push them up and give Sirius my best apologetic smile as I watch him visibly come apart just a bit at his seams. “I understand the whims of a Healer’s schedule are less than predictable, it’s alright.”

Floundering with what looks like a grip on his own resolve, Sirius clenches his jaw before opening his mouth. “I—” He decides against what he was about to say with a snap of his mouth shutting again, but he tosses his head like a fussy racehorse with a snort of sigh before redoubling his stare at me and drawing a deep breath; “I’ve tried to tell myself the magnetism I feel from you is due to your heritage, and I’ve tried not to intrude on your life, truly, I have; and if you find this inconvenient or undesirable in any way I—I’ll find another shop to buy my books and you’ll never have to see me again, I promise you, but I feel I can’t go another day without saying that I am bewitched by you, body and soul, and I can hardly stand to pretend otherwise any longer.”

I feel transported back to an instant of my childhood, in which I had been running full-tilt across wet grass in the back garden and accidentally slipped on a particularly dodgy patch of it. Knocked flat on my back, staring up at the wash of slate-colored clouds covering the wide sky, I had gasped for air for several seconds and come up with nothing but resistance in my chest.

Thinking my staggered thrill a need for explanation, Sirius continues; “If you don’t return these feelings,” he blurts, his voice pitching with a bit more fervor as his hands press into the desktop in their own silent bid for comprehension, “I understand entirely, and I’m so sorry if this has distressed you at all, a—and I apologize, profusely, for airing these fairly haphazard truths but given the privilege, I would prize nothing more than the chance to give you the world, Remus.”

He stills with my name in the air again,  _ Remus, _ ringing off the partials of his mouth like the purest of church bells. “Truly,” he murmurs after snatching a ragged breath, “Anything, everything you could ever want. I’m nothing but a man with a bleeding heart and a penchant for fixing hurts, but I’ve quickly discovered that being around you, however briefly, in whichever context, makes me feel as though I could face the end of existence itself and emerge a conqueror.”

I stare at him for several long seconds, the soft patter of rainwater dripping from his robes down onto the carpet twinning with the low growl of the storm carrying on outside as elation swells thick and present in my heart.

“Lock the door,” I finally find the air to whisper.

Sirius’ gaze shudders. “What?”

“Lock the door, please, and follow me into the office,” I say a little more evenly.

Another second ticks by before Sirus nods quickly, turning immediately to the sturdy latch on the door as I tip up the gate at the end of the desk and hurry into the back office.

_ Fuck, fuck, fucking shit, _ my guts riot with a combination of mortal dread and abject glee; I’ve been wanting this,  _ needing  _ this for so long, and now that I have it I hardly know what to do with it.

I am, I find with a bolt of angular humor as Sirius steps into the cramped space behind me and shuts the door softly as though it’s another one of his exam rooms, very much like the wolf just barely buried back in my bones when it chases its rabbits—pursue, pursue, pursue with relentless intensity, but know not what the hell to do with the poor thing if you ever catch it.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says again, “if that made you uncomfortable or you don’t want me to—”

I hush him with a soft susurration, comfort and assertion both present in the sound that makes him silent in an instant. I step forward once, twice, finally give myself leave to reach up and touch the edge of his dampened robes with gentle fingers when we’re but a breath apart from one another.

“I’ve had many people tell me many things over the years,” I whisper very carefully, watching Sirius’ throat bob as he swallows and tracking the sweet clamor of his pulse just beside that on the long column of his neck. “Lots of confession, lots of adoring, but never anyone who might  _ conquer existence itself _ for me.”

“It was silly, I know,” Sirius groans, pained and excited at the same time. I breathe a chuckle and slip my glasses off, resting them on the corner of the desk to my right and looking full up at Sirius from so near. His expression melts. He’s mine, I realize for the first time; mine entirely, and I feel like flying.

“Not silly at all.” I murmur it against his skin, eager as I am to finally kiss him somewhere. I press my lips to the side of his neck once, twice, lips and tongue and a ghost of teeth, and I feel him tremble—lean helplessly against me and hold himself so still that I have to slide his hands around my waist for him before he flexes his fingers sweetly against my back. “On the contrary, Sirius, I daresay you’re speaking for the both of us.”

At that, both our hearts clamoring with such adoration, Sirius tips his face down and I tip my face up to meet in the carnelian clash of a kiss so deep I’m surprised I don’t drown in its splendor. I press Sirius into the door behind him, hungry to taste him and smell him and feel him hold me like this, and in turn he breathes into me and licks ardor into my mouth as though he invented the thing itself.

I have never felt this sense of purpose with anyone I’ve ever chosen to adore before. In all honesty, I had never  _ known _ this was possible to feel.

If there is a frantic bit of disrobing and awkward stumbling and blissful joy that Sirius and I find along our way up to that hallowed point of first contact, first meeting of hearts and bodies in full, I’ll leave you to imagine all its exquisite little quirks and angles. I don’t doubt the version you drum up will be at least twelve times as glorious as it truly is, despite my deeper sense for finding the alluring in the strange and mundane.

But I think I will say, there in the afterglow of frenzied and perfectly sloppy sex with Sirius Black—splayed out on my back on a terribly disarrayed desk as Sirius collapses, less than clothed, into the desk chair with a righteous and gorgeous crow of breathless laughter he all but sews into my skin with a deep-hearted kiss to the inside of my sweaty, sated thigh—I think I finally know a bit more of about what exactly all those romance novelists are writing for page after page after lovely bloody page.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to drop me an ask prompt any time on tumblr, it might take a little while but I can promise it will very likely turn into at least a fun little microfic ^^


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